All News

Guiding partner.

Saving the Defence …for less experienced players and others.

There are times when you can see how the defence should go but that is not always apparent to your partner. Your task is to make it as easy as possible to follow the right route to beat the opponent’s contract.

 

Your partner opens a 12-14 1NT after which South bids very quickly to game. Your partner leads a potentially quite good for the defence 6 with South winning the first trick with K.

Next comes K from South won by your partner’s ace to be followed by Q from West . Over to you to save the defence. You really would like a heart ruff, maybe even two ruffs if you were being greedy. You have to convince your partner to switch to a heart. Plan the defence.

It seems evident that your partner is not aware how good their initial heart lead was. Perhaps they intended it just as a passive lead not wanting to give away anything on the opening lead. If they knew how good it was, they would have continued with a second heart.

So, it’s time to take stock and seek to try and guide partner. One important piece of information you know (and your partner does not) is that South has at most one club since your partner is marked with at least 2 for their no-trump opening. So, barring your partner opening 1NT with the singleton Q, you must stop them from continuing the suit.

One way is to play a discouraging card on the Q. If you play reverse encouragement at such a time, you could try the 10 discouraging though your partner might wonder why they won the trick and you discouraged. 10 might carry a suit preference meaning for a continuation to the higher red suit.

If you think that method would work for you, go for it. At the table, East tried a different approach. These were the four hands:

 

East decided to overtake the Q with the A, thus giving West the impression that South held the K. Then East played 9 as negative a card as possible in that suit. It seemed evident that West held A for their opening bid. They had to to defeat the contract. The plan worked. From West’s point of view, declarer held the K and they could see winners in both red suits in dummy. Furthermore, West could not see J and thus continuing that suit seemed dangerous.

Thus, the heart ruff secured the fourth trick for the defence after the three defensive aces had won tricks. Of course, a heart at trick 3 would have defeated the contract by two tricks as East could manage two ruffs. That would have been great for the defence but by taking four tricks, a defensive disaster was avoided.

East might have achieved that by signalling but also achieved the same end by creating a false picture of the club situation and by basically forcing their partner to play the right suit. It would have been a shame for the contract to have made after such a good opening lead.

 

Keeping it a secret

 

You resist the temptation, wisely, of showing any spade support for your partner during the auction though you now find yourself on lead to 5. What is your choice?

Richard Solomon

 

Go Back View All News Items